


Period Pains

by orphan_account



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Curse!AU, Darling Pan - Freeform, F/M, fluffff, fluffy though, i meant this to be HAPPY, pendy, tumblr prompts series, tw: Mentions of Suicide, wendy/peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:35:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stacey suffers from anaemia and a heavy period, Sam suffers from bad memories. </p><p>(if you're squeamish when it comes to menstrual cycles and think it's disgusting, you should probably stop because it's a fact of life and also not read this)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Period Pains

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked: prompt: au storybrooke- darling pan is a couple now living in storybrooke and wendy now has to face her monthly 'gift' and peter has no clue how to comfort her

Stacey hovers over the toilet bowl, grimacing at the still, flat water inside the porcelain. She hasn’t thrown up yet, but every few minutes a wave of nausea, powerful and acidic, rises up her throat, and she’s not taking any chances. Her hair hangs over her shoulders, damp and sweaty, and the one hand that clutches at the white ceramic is pale, clammy.

“Stacey? I got your text,” Sam’s voice, loud as ever, booms from downstairs, “I brought chocolate and the other shit you wanted- Stacey?”

A door slams. Footsteps, heavy against the tiles of her kitchen floor. She leans away from the bowl and sits on the cool tiles, her back against the wall. He sounds disgruntled, no doubt irritated that she’s interrupted his shift at the toy store. He loves that place, but her message had been dramatic and short, unusual compared to her habitually long-winded texts:  _get me chocolate, coffee and movies, I need you_ , so he’s probably worried underneath all that grump.

They’ve been together for three months so far, and it’s been… interesting, to say the least. He mainly hangs out at her house, eating her food, with his boots up on her furniture, being sarcastic and snarky. Stacey kind of likes it, though- not that she’d ever admit this- because while he’s mean to everyone else he’s still the boy who pretends not to like blueberries so she can have the last ones, the boy who secretly buys books he thinks she’ll like and leaves them lying around the house, the boy who kisses her like she’s the only thing that matters. It makes her feel more special, more coveted, knowing that she’s the one person he trusts- other than his Uncle Harry, of course.

The two of them aren’t exactly a conventional couple, to be honest, but it works. They fit. They fight a  _lot,_ and ferociously, but apologetic Sam’s habit of giving _great_  backrubs is something Stacey has come to look forward to and most of their arguments end in hysterical laughter, anyway. She ignores the hurtful things he says when he’s mad, and he looks over the fact that she doesn’t trust him completely yet, and sometimes pushes him too far about his past. It’s not perfect, but it  _fits_. She can’t imagine being with anyone else.

“I’m up here,” she croaks out, from her seat on the bathroom floor. She sounds trembling and weak.

“Fawkes?” a hint of worry, in his voice now. “You OK?” A thud- he’s dropped the groceries on her kitchen table.

Stacey doesn’t answer, instead looking down at the horrific amount of blood that coats her thighs and palms. Her period has always been heavy, but rarely like  _this_ \- and the cramps,  _oh God_ the cramps. It feels like someone is scraping away at the walls of her uterus, twisting and pulling at the already sore organ. She’s taken as much Aspirin as she can, but she’s out of supplement tablets for her low blood-iron and it’s giving her a stronger headache than the pills can shift. Her back  _aches,_ her skin is pale and clammy, and she feels like she’s going to throw up.

Her skirt is soaking in her sink, since it’s stained with blood, so she’s sitting on her bathroom floor in her ugly cotton panties and shirt, trying not to cry.

Heavy, fast footsteps on the stairs. Sam’s not running to her aid, but he’s definitely not ambling either, and that is quite the record for him. “Stace-” he slams open the bathroom door, holding an open bar of chocolate in one hand,  _The Princess Bride_ in the other, and stops.

She doesn’t have time to congratulate him on his excellent movie choice (she showed it to him on their third date, and watched, amusedly, as he tried to smother his laughter at a ‘chick flick’) before he’s thrown both items down and is kneeling next to her on the floor.

“What-” Stacey says, but he’s got his hands on her shoulders and is  _yelling,_ frantic and furious.

Sam’s expressions is that of wide-eyed shock and twisted anger, his mouth contorted as he yells things she’s too astounded and dazed to completely understand right now, only a few words that pierce through the fog, words like _stupid_ and  _leave_ and  _don’t_ , digging his fingernails into bare skin. His cheeks are flushed from the heat outside, sweat beading at his forehead, his green shirt rumpled. There’s chocolate at the corner of his lip, and she’d wipe it for him if her hands weren’t all bloody-

 _Oh._ It clicks into place- why he’s shouting at her. There’s blood all over her hands from where she tried to wipe herself off, a bottle of pills clutched in her trembling fingers, and her skin is clammy and cold. She probably looks like death, eyes glazed over and unfocused- he doesn’t know about her anaemia, and she’s never been sick like this while on her monthly cycle. As someone who grew up in a house with only one other man and isn’t familiar with her illness, he’s probably freaking out.

“Sam,” she whispers, and she can hear his words now, but they’re confused and scared, like a child’s.

“You- don’t you go, don’t you  _go_ \- stupid-” he hisses, shaking her, and she uses her relatively-clean forearms to push him away.

He doesn’t relent, pulling the bottle of Aspirin from her and throwing it to the sink. He makes a desperate sound at the back of his throat and pulls her to him, clutching at her bloody hands, wiping the muck away. Hitching, broken noises flow from his open mouth as he pulls her even closer to him. For an awful moment, she thinks he’s  _crying-_ but no, of course not. He’s merely babbling, his words stuck on his lips, caged by anger and fear.

She stares at him, at his wild eyes, watching while he paws at the skin of her wrists, scrutinizing them, searching for the source of the blood. His breathing comes in ragged pants, and he chokes out words in between each one. “Stace- please- _please-_ ”

“ _Sam!_ ” Stacey snaps, finally able to be heard over his panicked ramblings. “I. Am. On. My.  _Period._ ”

He pauses, his hold on her hands loosening, and she snatches them away. “Period?” he asks, dumbly.

“Yes,” and she wants to add  _you idiot,_ but she’s never seen him this small-looking, this afraid, so she doesn’t.

Sam looks down at her blood on his fingers. “So this is…”

“Uhuh.”

He opens and closes his mouth a few times, before clamping it shut. He nods, lips thin, and colour drains from his already-sickly face. He stands up and rushes over to the sink, where he picks up the skirt soaking in reddish water by the hem and tosses it, sopping, onto the floor. Sam ignores her indignant  _hey!_ and pulls the plug, turning on the tap and using what seems to Stacey like about a tonne of handsoap. His shoulders are convex, his eyebrows drawn taut in an irate frown, and the muscles of his jaw are bunched tight.

“The pills were for the pain.” She tells him, quietly. “And I was… faint… because I’m anaemic.”

“You didn’t tell me.” He says hoarsely.

“It’s not serious- this was just a really bad one-”

“Why are you bleeding that much?” he interrupts, gesturing to her thighs. “I- there shouldn’t be so much blood.”

“Sometimes there is,” she informs him gently, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think-”

Sam waves away her apology. “It’s fine.” He says, stiffly. He doesn’t look at her directly, his eyes fixed somewhere above her head. He’s still breathing heavily, erratically.

“It’s not, Sam.” Stacey insists. “You need to trust me, tell me what’s wrong.”

“ _I_ need to trust you?” he snarls. “I need-” he stops, slides his hands into his hair and pulls, inhaling sharply through his nostrils.

She stands on shaky legs, grimacing when another wave of dizziness hits her. She leans her shoulder against the wall, closing her eyes til it passes. When she opens them again, Sam’s expression is guarded, closed-off, his arms crossed firmly over his chest. Stacey wobbles over to the sink, stepping carefully over her sodden skirt, and scrubs her hands clean.

“You don’t tell me about  _anything,_ ” he intones harshly, a hair’s breadth from her ear, “what if you’d fainted, or gone into shock, or-?”

“Sam, my anaemia is  _not that bad._ I just got a dizzy spell, OK? And I don’t have any iron supplements, which I need when my period’s heavy.” She puts a wet hand on his arm. “That’s  _all_. I’m sorry I worried you.”

“That’s all? You’re not sick?”

“I’m nauseous, and dizzy, but that’s it. No need to panic.”

He looks down at the smudges of red on her thighs, scowling. “C’mon,” he mutters, taking her hands in his, “you should take a shower.”

He pulls her towards her shower-tub, uncharacteristically gentle, using one hand to lead her and the other to take a fluffy bathmat and deposit it on the floor. He opens the shower door, reaches inside and turns the water on, leaving his arm under the stream to test the temperature. While she’s undressing, Stacey studies his profile. His eyebrows are furrowed, his lips thin, but this time it’s in concentration and  _concern_ rather than anger. He keeps clearing his throat, little half-coughs that don’t quite push past the sort-of whining phase, a habit he has when he’s nervous about something.

 _Trying to avoid the subject,_ she thinks. Sam’s prone to being completely unsurprised by everything, in sharp contrast to this colossaloverreaction. She would have expected him to see the state she was in, make a joke, and  _ask_ what was going on rather than swooping in like some idiot with a saviour complex and start freaking out. Sure, he’s a boy who’s grown up with no mother to teach him about the (not all that) confusing plumbing in the woman’s body, but Stacey had figured the  _chocolate_ and  _movies_ and freaking  _tampon cases_ littering her floors would have been a clue.

Something is going on.

Sam Greene is more observant and calculating than anyone she’s ever met; it’s just not  _like_ him to rush into a situation without knowing about every little thing that was going on. At least that can explain his anger over her not detailing her anaemia- just as Stacey is an exception to the  _I hate everyone_ rule her boyfriend has seemingly instilled in himself, she’s also an exception to the  _I don’t care about anything_ rule, too. This often clashes horribly with the  _I need to know everything about everyone_  rule.

“Get in.” he tells her, and starts to shrug off his shirt.

Stacey raises an eyebrow, but does as he says. They haven’t exactly passed the showering together stage of their relationship, as of yet. They haven’t even  _slept_ together, for God’s sake. Not that she doesn’t want to, though, it’s more that her dads and brothers are usually home (they’re out all day, and if she hadn’t been on her  _stupid_ period- well, it would have been  _on_ ), and while Sam’s Uncle Harry is rarely at their apartment, it’s not exactly the most…  _romantic_ … of places.

So, when she steps into the shower, completely naked, she’s shaky for one reason other than her low blood-iron. The spray is perfect; not too hot, not too cold, nice pressure. She lets it soak her hair for a moment, running her fingers through the tangled mess. Sam gets in after her, clad in his boxers and nothing else, grabs a loofa and some body scrub. The water gets him, too, and she lets herself enjoy the sight of droplets coasting down the smooth expanse of leanly-muscular chest, his broad shoulders and narrow waist. His gold-brown hair flops over his forehead, his adam’s apple bobbing.

 _My boyfriend is so cute,_ Stacey thinks, amusedly, before dragging her gaze to his expression.

He watches her, his eyes worried, and makes another half-cough in the back of his throat. He squeezes coconut body-scrub onto the loofa.

“What are you doing?” she asks, but he merely  _shh_ s her and motions for her to face the wall.

Stacey sighs at him, but decides to let him do what he needs to do, recognising the gesture as one of apology.

He begins at her back, rubbing small circles across her shoulders and neck, using one hand to sweep her hair to one side. At this angle, the water arcing over her head and flowing down her spine, and she hums contentedly. Sam works the knotted muscles until they’re loose, pressing and massaging, placing a chaste kiss on her shoulder when he’s done.

“That nice?” he asks, a hand on her waist, and she makes a whiny sound that comes across as far more wanton than she intended. Smirking against the skin of her neck, he tells her “I’m taking that as a yes,” and nips at her ear.

He does her arms next, coating her skin in sweet-smelling lather, then the side of her body, then her legs, all the way to her feet. Reddish water swirls down the drain, along with the washed-off foam, leaving her feeling clean, pampered, and refreshed.

He reaches around her, pressing himself against her back, and turns off the water. “I’ll be downstairs with the movies and candy. You get your  _jammies_  on.” Then he’s gone, waltzing out the door, all false bravado and worried eyes.

Stacey blushes at the word  _jammies,_ regretting for what feels like the thousandth time saying  _that_  word in reference to her pyjamas in front of him.

When she does get downstairs, clad in her thin cotton nightgown and fluffy socks, hair dried and piled up in a bun, everything covered and dealt with, she is met with Sam’s cheery grin (she isn’t fooled) and  _The Princess Bride._

“Coffee,” she demands, as way of greeting, “I need coffee.”

“Nope.” He retorts, steering her away from the kitchen and to the living room. “Caffeine is bad for cramps.”

“Oh, OK-” she stops abruptly, staring at him. “Wait a sec,” Stacey exclaims as she is dumped on the sofa amongst what looks like  _all_ of the house’s blankets, “how do you know  _that?_ ”

He stills, mouth working, eyes fixed resolutely on hers in the way she knows he’s trying  _very_ hard not to glance at something else. She peeks over his shoulder, spotting her laptop, that’s lying open on the kitchen table.

She gasps. “You  _googled_ it, didn’t you?”

“You took ages!” Sam replies indignantly.

“Oh my God,” Stacey giggles, “you really do have to know  _everything_ about  _every_ situation, don’t you?”

“No,” he says, furiously, but she knows better.

“Yes.”

“Let’s just- watch the movie, OK?” he makes to leap towards the DVD player, but she grabs his arm and hauls him back.

He collapses onto the couch, coltish legs thrown haphazardly about the place, his head in her lap.

“Now,” she says sweetly, latching her hands onto his shoulders so he can’t escape, “are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” he grunts, staring up at her.

“Lies,” Stacey chastises, “you’re telling me,  _now._ ” Her tone is the scary-deep one that only ever resurfaces when she needs to let people know she is  _seriously pissed,_  to the point where violence and death-plotting are not merely specks upon the horizon, but actual foreseeable events.

He swallows. That tone has only been directed upon him twice, and he  _really_ doesn’t want to re-live those two times. Sam squeezes his eyes shut, clears his throat weakly. “It’s not- it’s not a nice- you’re-” he stutters, and she places a hand on his forehead.

“Not a nice story?” she asks, and he nods. “Sam, I don’t care about that. You  _know_ I don’t,” she says gently, “and I’d rather you were honest with me.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he croaks, “about your anaemia.”

“I told you I’m sorry about that, and this is different. This is serious.”

He sighs. Nods. “I freaked… I reacted, uh,  _badly,_ ” he begins, voice faltering and weaker than she’s ever heard it, “because I thought you were hurting yourself.”

“I got that,” she tells him, gently. “But you could have just  _asked_ , you know.”

“I know,” he confirms, “and why would you have asked me for chocolate and shit if you were going to-” he breaks off. “It was obvious, now that I think about it.”

“It’s OK.”

Sam nods, his eyes fluttering shut when her fingers start to weave through the damp locks of his hair. “You- you know my parents died when I was a kid.”

“Yeah,” she affirms, “you were… five, right?”

“Right. They lived in a house like this, y’know.” When she doesn’t answer, he continues. “They killed themselves, Stace. Double suicide. And I- I found them.”

“Oh,  _God,_ Sam.” Stacey whispers, and her fingers still. The puzzle pieces start to fall into place, and she feels sick to her stomach. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“My mom slit her wrists,” he goes on quietly, his voice hitching, “and my father took pills. They were in a bedroom, but… still. So when I saw you…” he swallows, “and the blood, and the pills, I just- I panicked. Sometimes I do, y’know? Harry says it’s a- a trigger thing. It just happens.”

He sits up, turning to face her, and she winds her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his shoulder. His hands come round to press against her back, and he clutches at her, andshe feels as if she can barely breathe. “I thought you were leaving me,” he breathes, so,  _so_  quietly. He trembles bodily, shaking in her arms.

“Never.” She tells him, pulling back, “ _Never_.”

Sam nods, planting a desperate, shaky kiss on her lips. He exhales, shivering, into her mouth, and she leans back, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead. She cradles his face between her small hands, pressing her brow to his. “I won’t leave, either.” He tells her, hushed, secretly.

Moments like these, moments when he’s vulnerable, are so rare that she hardly knows what to do when they arise. Admissions like  _I won’t leave_ are special, and she knows she’ll cherish them with her whole heart.

“Good. I’d track you down, anyway.” She tells him, as a way of answer, but to her ears it sounds like an  _I love you_.

“Stalker.” He says, and she gives a watery chuckle.

“Child.” She retorts, but he’s not offended.

“You’re crying,” he whispers, swiping his thumbs underneath her eyes.

“I’m sad. It’s a sad story, Sam.”

He’s quiet for a moment. He leans forward to capture her lips again in a kiss that’s just as intoxicating as they always are, his knuckles brushing her cheekbone. She closes her eyes, scooting forward, moving her hands to tangle in his hair. She sighs into his mouth as he swipes his tongue across her bottom lip, and he wraps both arms about her waist and pulls her to him. He tastes sweet, and smells like dust, the burnt-sugar-and-dirt scent of his weird toy store clinging to him. They kiss, and kiss, and kiss, long and tender, until her tears have dried up and they’re lying down, Stacey sandwiched between the sofa and his body.

She pulls away just as another cramp starts up. “Ow,” she mutters, leaning her head on his chest, “ow ow  _ow._ ”

“Have some chocolate. I hear it cures everything.” Sam pulls a giant block from behind him, “I learnt that from a movie, by the way. I didn’t google it.” He adds, and she laughs.

It’s not perfect, far from it- they’re both kind of broken, in their own ways, and they fight almost every other day, and sometimes she drives him  _crazy_ and he makes her want to scream, but it fits. They wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
